This Netflix film is lacklustre and confused – it doesn’t do justice to the books
If every household in the 90s had a copy of Harry Potter on their shelf, then every household in the 2020s surely has The Thursday Murder Club. Richard Osman’s cosy crime book series has sold tens of millions of copies around the world; it’s the most borrowed book in UK libraries; every sequel – the fifth in the series is out next month – has spawned enormous hype and made big money. It’s no wonder that possibly the most impressive British cast ever assembled, from Helen Mirren to Ben Kingsley, lined up to star in this much-anticipated film adaptation. So why are they all phoning it in?
Osman’s books, which are intentionally derivative and very funny, focus on a group of four pensioners – indomitable ex-spy Elizabeth (played here by Helen Mirren); Ron (Pierce Brosnan), a formerly famous trade unionist; psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) and former nurse and enthusiastic baker Joyce (Celia Imrie) – in the upmarket retirement village of Coopers Chase in Kent (Berkshire, in the film).
They spend their days examining cold cases to ward off the boredom of old age, before a real-life murder lands on their doorstep. But what works on the page doesn’t always translate to a two-hour feature film. The Thursday Murder Club never nails its tone, forever feeling like it’s still in rehearsal rather than down to the final edit.
The acting feels a little lacklustre – you sense they’re all having a jolly good time on set but it’s never quite believable, particularly from Brosnan, whose character is meant to be a cockney wide-boy but who offers us instead that familiar Bond RP, even slipping occasionally into his native Irish. Mirren is encumbered with embarrassingly hackneyed lines such as: “Do you have any idea who killed him?” and Kingsley delivers over-written exposition like: “Unprocessed trauma can cause erratic behaviour!” far too merrily. Imrie injects scenes with a bit more pizzazz, as does Jonathan Pryce as Elizabeth’s husband, but neither is used enough.
Extraneous plotlines have been simplified and personal stakes sensibly increased for the sake of a clearer cinematic arc. Here, the posse are trying to save Coopers Chase from closure at the hands of megalomaniac owner Ian (David Tennant), and humble Joyce’s place in the group is precarious: will the other three, with their ferocious intellects, ever really accept her?
“[It’s like] an old episode of Columbo,” declares the hapless DCI Hudson (Daniel Mays) gravely, as he investigates the death of a detested local property magnate with all the forensic realism of a kids’ cartoon. And indeed, The Thursday Murder Club does have the feel of a twee, old-fashioned cop show like Columbo, or a British murder mystery like Midsomer Murders, complete with a big old manor house, criminals masquerading as florists and amateur sleuths who discuss stab wounds over tea served in exquisite bone china. There’s something to enjoy here for fans of grey pound British comedy in the manner of Calendar Girls.
But Calendar Girls this is not. The limp script (written by Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’s Katy Brand and Killing Eve’s Suzanne Heathcote) does a disservice to the source material, and the direction never seems to know quite what to do with so many stars in one place, leaving an awkwardness reminiscent of the early Harry Potter films (which were also directed by The Thursday Murder Club’s American director, Chris Columbus).
The best I can say is that this is throwaway, easy-watching on a Sunday afternoon. It will be much more at home on Netflix than the big screen, and feels like it is intended this way, mirroring its cosy crime TV counterparts: a celebration of low stakes country crime where murder never really hurts anyone and everyone lives in expensively wallpapered housing.
The project originally had a different writer and director in place: Ol Parker, the Brit behind The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. One does wonder whether he would have tied it all together slightly more cohesively – and got Brosnan to polish up that accent.
In select cinemas now; on Netflix from 28 August
